For more than a year, a backyard pool is all Connor McKinnon has wanted.
Within a few days the nine-year-old will realize that dream, thanks to the Children’s Wish Foundation.
As recently 2008 his parents didn’t dare to dream their young son might one day have the opportunity to splash around with his friends on a hot summer day outside their
Diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of cancer, doctors suggested Connor might only live a month.
So far, he’s beaten those odds, and though doctors have told his parents he may need another round of treatment this month, a summer of cannonballs awaits.
Connor can’t wait.
“It feels really great. I’m really surprised. I wouldn’t have ever imagined that I would get a pool,” he said. “I’ve been wanting it for a year.”
His mom and dad, it seems, kept Connor in the dark about their new backyard addition. The first he knew of it was when workers from Executive Pools and Spad showed up at his door on Monday, shovels in hand.
First introduced to the Children’s Wish Foundation two years ago, when Connor was first diagnosed, his parents said their son knew from Day 1 what he wanted.
“He kept saying ‘I want a pool, I want a pool.’ We didn’t know if they would actually grant a pool as a wish. We held off on his wish for a little while, while he was going through some more treatment,” said mom Kelli McKinnon.
“Finally this summer Connor had finished his treatment … so we decided to get back in touch with Children’s Wish again and get this moving. He just found out two days ago. He had sort of put the pool in the back of his mind, thinking it wasn’t going to happen. The look on his face yesterday and the day before was sheer amazement.”
The youngster took charge immediately, setting up lawn chairs so he could oversee construction of the 16-foot by 32-foot structure, first watching them dig the sod and lay the crushed stone foundation.
His mom is just as excited, though for different reasons.
“In the last two years Connor has had a real uphill battle. There have been a lot of things that he’s missed out on. He’s an avid hockey player and he plays baseball and he loves to play soccer with his friends,” McKinnon said. “But every time we get thinking there is a time where he could actually get involved with his hockey team, we’d have to miss a hockey tournament because he’d be in the hospital or he’d end up on treatment or have to fly down to
“This pool for us gives him a bit of make-up time for the things he hasn’t been able to be involved with.”
That’s exactly what Andrew Coffey, who heads the local chapter of the Children’s Wish Foundation, wants to hear.
The Canadian branch, formed in 1983, has granted more than 14,000 wishes to kids across the country with high-risk conditions. Locally they’ve raised more than $1 million over the past two decades, in an effort to see that no child’s dream goes unfulfilled.
“We’ve had five or six every year, which is bittersweet,” Coffey said. “We don’t want to see children get sick if we can help them … And we never turn down a child who qualifies.”
That's why Daniel MacLeay, owner of Executive Pools and Spas, who said he doesn’t do a lot of charity work, said this is one case he was glad to step forward and lend a hand.
“It’s allowing a kid to be a kid. Having to grow up with something as terrible as cancer, you’re not allowed to just sit around and have fun. He can put that to the back of his mind and just be a kid.”
